People with disabilities face 20-year wait for a house

Some people with a mental health disability in Galway have languished on the county’s social housing waiting list for 20 years – five times the average wait.

And people with a physical disability have also been forced to wait 15 years for a local authority house, while those with sensory or intellectual disabilities can endure waits of up to nine years.

The average waiting time for a home on Galway County Council’s social housing list, for people with and without a disability, is four years.

The disparities in waiting times for ‘regular’ housing applicants as opposed to those with mental health, physical or intellectual disabilities, and the apparent systemic discrimination against the latter group, was laid bare at the latest Galway County Council meeting.

Outlining the figures, Director of Services for Housing, Michael Owens, said waiting times of between 15 and 20 years for people with disabilities was “unacceptable”.

Mr Owens outlined the waiting figures as he unveiled a Strategic Plan for Housing People with a Disability, which he said would help to reduce the wait times.

Fine Gael County Councillor, Niamh Byrne said she was “absolutely shocked” that people with mental health disabilities were waiting 20 years for a Council house.

The strategy points out that the number of people on the housing waiting list with a disability is 666. Of these, some 288 have a mental health disability (43%), some 293 have a physical disability (44%) and the remaining 11% have an intellectual disability and 2% have a sensory disability.

Mr Owens explained that the waiting times for people with mental health disabilities is 20 years – the “highest” of all categories of people waiting to be housed.

He said the average waiting times for a home is four years but there are exceptions.

Describing the waiting times as “unacceptable”, Mr Owens told Councillors that the new strategy being brought forward “will help towards reducing” the 15 to 20-year waits.

Mr Owen’s said changes to the allocations systems, and the creation of a six to nine months ‘offer zone’, as part of the new strategy, will remove one of the barriers faced by people with disabilities when they are made an offer of a house.

Disabilities has now been bumped up to third from fourth on the list of priorities of the criteria when the housing applicant’s request is being considered. This should also help reduce the waiting list, he said.

Some 25% of the people on Galway County Council’s waiting list has a disability – and the national average is 16%. This new criteria prioritisation should change that, he said.

Seán Ó Tuairisg (FF) welcomed the document but feared that, without the necessary financial backing, it would be giving “false hope” to people with disabilities on the housing waiting lists. Malachy Noone (FF) said the “measure of any society and local authority is the manner in which it treats its most vulnerable”.

Mr Owens, in response to queries from Dermot Connolly (SF) said there were 40 allocations of housing to people with disabilities in 2016 – including nine with mental health disabilities, and 25 with physical disabilities.

The longer waiting times for people with disabilities can be explained, in part, by the nature of the disability ruling those applicants out for much of the housing stock within the control of the local authority. They often require bungalows and specially adapted homes.

Mr Owens said the Council was engaging with developers at the moment to provide new additional disability-specific accommodation under Part V planning rules for new developments. The Council plans to provide housing adaption and mobility grants to 165 people every year for the next four years; having provided 466 in 2015 and 2016.